A bodega is a feeling. They’re tucked away into buildings, usually the corner, but not always. Their windows are almost completely covered in lotto signs, posters, the occasional neon light. You can still see inside (obviously) but the windows aren’t filled with neatly organized weekly sales, or the big CVS/Walgreens/Duane Reade logos.
They’re not big and spacious with repetitive features and easy to identify isles like your average drug store. They’re small and homey, a unique feature for a place that is lit solely with flourecent lights. They usually have the local bodega cat (and you know a yuppie when they bitch about the cat), who sometimes lets you pet her. Their shelves are lined with snacks from obscure areas of the world, and knock off brands that somehow just taste better than the name brand. Sometimes household necessities are in their own isle, but usually theyre next to a variety of items like pet food, chips, cake mixes, cereal (it changes depending on your bodega). Coolers are filled with both alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks, sometimes humming, other times roaring because they’re fifteen years old and held together with ducttape and a stubborn refusal to replace them. And almost always there’s a deli that can give you a baconeggandcheese (all one word), in the morning and a chopped cheese whenever you’re craving it.
A bodega is not just a cornerstore, it’s the heart of a neighborhood. It’s where the kids go in the morning, swarming in to get drinks, snacks, breakfast, maybe even lunch. It’s where the tired third shifters and barely awake first shifters coming in to chat, pick up a coffee, a soda, a candy bar. It’s where you go after school, after work, late at night, in any mood or outfit.
A bodega is a brief window into the heart of New York. The one that isn’t tailored and refined by the rich, the suburbanites, the yuppies and the ever hungry universities. The one that keeps the city beating, even when all the Wall Street implants and commuters abandon ship.
A bodega is a feeling.
